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Raising Arizona

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Raising Arizona
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJoel Coen
Ethan Coen
(uncredited)
Written byEthan Coen
Joel Coen
Produced byEthan Coen
Joel Coen
(uncredited)
StarringNicolas Cage
Holly Hunter
William Forsythe
John Goodman
Frances McDormand
Randall "Tex" Cobb
CinematographyBarry Sonnenfeld
Edited byMichael R. Miller
Music byCarter Burwell
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
March 6, 1987
Running time
94 min.
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6,000,000 (estimated)

Raising Arizona is a 1987 Coen Brothers comedy film starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand and Randall "Tex" Cobb. Not a blockbuster at the time of its release, it has since achieved the status of a cult film. Typical Coen Brothers fare, the movie is replete with symbolism, visual gags, yodeling folk music, unconventional characters, flamboyant camera work, pathos and idiosyncratic dialogue. The movie ranked number 31 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Laughs and number 45 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies."

Plot

Arizona petty criminal Herbert "H.I." McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) (known as "Hi") and policewoman Edwina (Holly Hunter) (known as "Ed") meet after she takes the mugshots of the recidivist Hi during his many trips through her station. Learning that Ed's fiancé has left her, he proposes to her after his latest release from prison and the two get married. They move into a desert mobile home, and Hi gets a job in a machine shop. Ed discovers that she is infertile and the couple tries to adopt, but none of the agencies will accept them because of Hi's criminal record. The couple learns of the "Arizona Quints," sons of locally-famous furniture magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson); Hi and Ed kidnap one of the five babies, Nathan Junior.

Hi and Ed return home and are soon visited by Hi's old prison buddies, Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman, William Forsythe), who have just broken out. Under the brothers' influence, Hi is tempted to revert to his felonious ways, believing that he and Ed are not well suited for each other. Their problems are only worsened when Hi's supervisor, Glen (Sam McMurray), proposes wife swapping and Hi assaults him. That night, Hi decides to steal a package of diapers for the baby and goes on the run from the entire local neighborhood, the police, the gun-toting store cashier, and a pack of dogs. Ed finally relents and picks him up, leading to a tense ride home.

At the McDunnough residence the next day, Glen stops by to officially fire Hi and reveals that he has deduced "Junior's" true identity. He gives Hi an ultimatum: give up the baby to be raised by Glen and his child-obsessed wife, or Glen will turn them in for the reward. Gale and Evelle overhear this conversation and immediately decide to betray Hi and take Junior for themselves. Gale and Hi's ensuing fight wrecks the mobile home's interior before Hi is subdued and tied up. Gale and Evelle leave, going through with their plan to rob a "hayseed" bank, only now with Junior in tow. When Ed comes home, she finds the battered and bound Hi and learns that the baby is gone. Despite their disintegrating relationship, Ed and Hi arm themselves and set out to retrieve their child together. En route, Ed suggests that they should end their marriage after recovering the boy.

At the same time, Nathan Arizona Sr. is approached by the menacing and heavily-armed biker/bounty hunter Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb) who offers to find the child for twice the publicly posted reward. Even though Nathan Sr. considers police efforts to locate his son totally inadequate, he refuses to partake of Smalls' services. Smalls decides to recover the child anyway to sell on the black market, which is exactly what happened to him as a baby. He begins tracking Gale and Evelle, using the scent of the brothers' hair pomade. Breaking into the deserted McDunnough mobile home, he finds a newspaper clipping concerning the targeted bank.

Gale and Evelle successfully rob the bank but forget to make sure Junior is in the car before getting away. Their miseries are compounded when one of the bank's anti-theft dye canisters explodes in their loot sack, disabling the car and incapacitating them. Back at the bank, Smalls arrives for Junior just ahead of Ed and Hi, mounting Junior's car seat on the front of his bike. As he turns around to fight the couple, Ed grabs the baby and flees; Hi is able to fend Smalls off for a short time, but then the biker begins to methodically brutalize him. After throwing Hi to the ground and drawing his matched pair of shotguns to finish the job, Hi holds up his hand to reveal that he has pulled the pin from one of the hand grenades on Smalls' vest. Smalls struggles to drop his guns and get rid of the grenade, but is blown to pieces.

Hi and Ed wearily sneak Nathan Jr. back into his home and are confronted by Nathan Sr. while putting him back in his crib. After Nathan Sr. learns why they took his son, he is uncharacteristically understanding of their predicament, and counsels the young couple. When they say that they are breaking up, he advises them to not act rashly; perhaps someday, medical science will catch up with them, just as it did ("with a vengeance") for him and his own wife. Hi and Ed go to sleep in the same bed, and Hi dreams: Gale and Evelle elect to return to prison; Glen gets his due from a Polish-American police officer after telling one Polack joke too many; and Nathan Jr. gets a football for Christmas, from someone other than his family, and later becomes a football star. The dream suggests that Hi and Ed will, in fact, grow old together, enjoying holiday visits from a horde of well-adjusted children and grandchildren.

Cast

Production

The police station scenes were filmed at the Tempe, Arizona police station on 5th Street next to Sun Devil Stadium on the Arizona State University campus, while the family picnic where H.I. punches Glen was filmed at the Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, Arizona.

The baby on the movie's international poster is Max Bemis who, years later became a founding member and the lead singer of the band Say Anything. His father designed the poster and used him as a model.

Influences and references

When H.I. wakes up after his nightmare, in which a bunny gets blown up by a grenade he says the line "Sometimes it's a hard world for small things", which is a reference to The Night of the Hunter, where Rachel Cooper proclaims "It's a hard world for little things" after seeing a hawk catching a bunny.

After Evelle and Gale break out of prison, they clean up in a gas station restroom where "P.O.E." and "O.P.E." are spraypainted on the walls, a reference to the film Dr. Strangelove, where it stood for both "Peace on Earth" and "Purity of Essence".

Leonard Smalls shares the name of Lennie Smalls, from John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. Both are physically powerful men who damage things smaller and weaker than themselves, though only Leonard does so intentionally. Lennie wants to take care of rabbits, while Leonard kills one with a grenade.

The text of the second-to-last screen of credits, which shows acknowledgment of several Southwestern U.S. Native American tribes, is arranged in the shape of a large clay pottery jar, a craft piece historically made by such tribes.

When Hi goes to work in a factory, his chatty co-worker (a cameo by M. Emmet Walsh) can be seen wearing a jumpsuit with the label, "Hudsucker Industries". The company name derived from a script written by the Coen brothers a couple of years earlier in collaboration with Sam Raimi, The Hudsucker Proxy, which the Coens had put on the back burner because they knew they wouldn't be able to raise the budget to make it properly. The script would eventually be filmed by the Coens and released in 1994. The idea of tracking a fugitive by the scent of his hair-pomade is reused in the Coens' 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Reception

The film grossed $22,847,564 in US box office totals and $6,332,716 Non-US.

Rotten Tomatoes.com gave it 90%.[1]

Empire magazine noted the "brilliantly crazed characters, apparently nonsensical dialogue and some fantastic camera shots." Vrij Nederland placed it's bank robbery scene second, on their list of "The 5 best bank robberies in film history", behind a bank robbery scene from the 1995 thriller Heat.[2]

American Film Institute recognition

Soundtrack

Untitled

The score to Raising Arizona is written by Carter Burwell, the second of his collaborations with the Coen Brothers.

The sounds are a mix of organ, massed choir, banjo, whistling and yodeling.

Themes are borrowed from the "Goofing Off Suite", originally recorded by Pete Seeger in 1955, which includes an excerpt from the "Chorale" movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" and "Russian Folk Themes and Yodel". Musicians credited with playing the music for the film are Ben Freed on banjo, Mieczyslaw Litwinski on Jew's harp and guitar and yodeling by John R. Crowder.

Selections from Burwell's score to Raising Arizona were released on an album in 1987, along with selections from the Coen's previous (and first) feature film, Blood Simple.

Track listing

  1. "Introduction - A Hole in the Ground" – (0:38)
  2. "Way Out There (Main Title)" – (1:55)
  3. "He Was Horrible" – (1:30)
  4. "Just Business" – (1:17)
  5. "The Letter" – (2:27)
  6. "Hail Lenny" – (2:18)
  7. "Raising Ukeleles" – (3:41)
  8. "Dream of the Future" – (2:31)
  9. "Shopping Arizona" – (2:46)
  10. "Return to the Nursery" – (1:35)
    • The tracks from Raising Arizona comprise the first ten tracks on a 17-track CD that also features selections from the Blood Simple soundtrack.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Raising Arizona.

References

  1. ^ http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/raising_arizona/ 'Raising Arizona' on rottentomatoes.com
  2. ^ Porcelijn, Max (2008-04-26). "The 5 Best Bank Robberies in Film History". Vrij Nederland. pp. 96–97.
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